A Note to US AIR - You have my $ now how about some service?

or... How US Air is singlehandedly trying to RUIN my family’s Disney World vacation.
or.... Dear US AIRWAYS, I HATE YOU.
or.... Greed Doesn't Pay.

I’ve experienced bad customer service before – who hasn’t? Luckily, I’ve also experienced wonderful customer service. I do my best to let my friends and family know about both types of experiences. Word of mouth is a powerful tool for all consumers and companies.So today I’d like to share my experience with what I believe to be the worst airline in the history of the world – US AIRWAYS.

I’m a planner. I don’t always follow through, but that’s another story altogether. I like to plan my Disney World vacations in particular. My family can joke all they want, but vacations don't happen as often as I'd like them to, so I want to do everythign I can to make sure they are as enjoyable as they can be. I think it’s reassuring to know where I’ll be eating and playing several months from now and especially handy to have those coveted dining spots reserved well ahead of time. It’s all part of my vacation enjoyment!

The same holds true for my hotel reservations. If I know for sure we’ll be able to afford a vacation in a certain year, I want to make sure it’s done right! Especially when dealing with Disney, things need to be booked several months if not a year or more ahead of time. I like to stay at a certain resort, and can narrow down my preferred resort location right down to the side of the building, floor and room # if I’m given the option (and since Disney does things right, I usually get my preferences fulfilled and then some). Disney always pleasantly surprises me.

Since the hotel reservations are made so far in advance, I also prefer to secure my airline reservations well in advance. We are a family of 6 these days, so it’s not like I’m just trying to get one or two seats – we need some ROWS of seats! In addition to my village, we also travel with extended family so that makes us a group of 12! So planning ahead is beneficial for many reasons.

For our upcoming trip, we (our entire party of 12) booked our airline reservations with US Airways in three seperate groups. Unfortunately in hindsight, this airline choice will turn into our BIGGEST MISTAKE EVER. See, when we booked we thought we were being smart in planning ahead. We watched the price and availability for a few days before hitting the submit button. As the plane was filling up, we were getting nervous. We knew we had to bite the bullet and just do it! You see, hitting the submit button with my family size would cause anyone a slight pause. The damage for this flight for our group of 6? $2,785.14. (Not including the $15.00 per bag EACH WAY and the $5.00 surcharge EACH WAY for each window or aisle seat we use – can you say price-gouging – I guess I should just sprinkle my small kids around the airplane so we can all have a middle seat). Yes, that’s $464.19 EACH to travel from our desert SW home to the House of Mouse in FLA. My boyfriend sees it as a whole lot (as in way too much) of money to get from one place to another (and he would be just as happy to stay home and relax for a week and a half), but I see it as money well spent to get my family to Mickey’s World as quickly as possible, during the most convenient time for our family of small children. That $464.19 per person was SUPPOSED to pay for a non-stop flight that was convenient for our family. That’s what you pay for, right? You make your choice out of the available options and you purposely ignore the horrible choices. Cause why would you pay almost THREE THOUSAND DOLLARS for something HORRIBLE, right?

Apparently US Air doesn’t see it this way. If their customers have to settle for horrible, it is apparently ok with them. They recently cancelled the fully booked flight we had a reservation on and decided my small children (and the rest of us) would be better off being reassigned to a connecting flight and add over TWO hours onto our FIVE HOUR FLIGHT. Does that sound convenient to anyone? Of course, not.

This might be the time to also tell everyone that this was not some last minute reservation where we were hoping to get squeezed onto some flight. These 12 US Airways reservations were made exactly EIGHT MONTHS, 2 WEEKS and 3 DAYS in advance of the flight reservation, which is still a few months away.

Yet all of that planning didn’t stop the greedy money-makers at US AIR from scheduling another flight within a ½ hour of our booked flight and then letting that new flight fill up with new passengers (who all obviously booked later than us as it was a newly scheduled flight) and then CANCELLING OUR FULLY-BOOKED FLIGHT. Not only did they cancel our flight, but they sent us an email at 11:00 p.m. (via Orbitz) a few nights ago letting us know that we had been switched to a connection (obviously on a flight where they needed to fill some seats!) that would add two hours to our plans. Yeah, I don’t think so. If I would have wanted a connecting flight I would have made that choice at the time of booking. So instead of kicking off someone that made a more recent reservation on the newly opened flight, and giving us that spot since we booked WAAAAAAY in advance of every freaking person on that new flight, they just switched us to a totally inconvenient flight, with not so much as a single word about the refund we should receive since obviously a connecting flight has much less value than a nonstop, direct flight. GREED, plain and simple. Oh and a healthy dose of stupidity, obviously.

So the next morning, a member of our party gets to sit on the phone with Orbitz for 78 mintues. Many of those minutes were on hold while Orbitz tried unsuccessfully to get a call through to US Airways. Wouldn’t you think being Orbitz they’d get a special bat-phone to use? Nope, they have to deal with the horrendous customer service of US AIR just like you and me! Maybe it’s comforting to know US AIR treats everyone with the same service. Unfortunately that service happens to be CRAP. Some of the 78 minutes were actually spent in the shower while another traveller in our group waited on hold and the operator was never the wiser. That is just about as sad as it gets. You can take a shower and brush your teeth while on hold, waiting for US AIR to answer the phone.

After it was all said and done, the only remedy that US AIR was willing to make for us, their ever-so-dearly-paying-customers is to now put us on a plane that leaves Orlando at 7:30 IN THE MORNING. Do you have any idea what time you have to leave your Disney World resort to hop on the Magical Express Bus to arrive at your 7:30 a.m. flight? 4:30 a.m. Yes, I will have to wake 4 children up at 3:30 a.m. (give or take) to get dressed and get ready. Does that sound like ANYONE’S idea of how a vacation should end? Do you think the executives at US AIRWAYS end their vacations at 3:30 in the morning? I highly doubt it.

So now, not only is the last day of my vacation NON-EXISTENT (we were originally supposed to be on a flight that left Orlando at 5:20 p.m. – because that’s what I chose and PAID for – convenience to leave at a time that worked well for us), but the day before will now be ruined as well because not only will we have to pack up everything, but we will also have to be in bed early because we will be waking up at the ungodly hour of FOUR-THIRTY A.M.!!!!

It’s especially nice knowing I just paid over $500 a night (it's actually $792.17 per night including our park admission) to have the last two days of my vacation ruined. Thanks for that, US AIR.

I would like to put a request out to US AIR. I would love nothing more than a response (in addition to my flight changed to the new non-stop flight that replaced my original flight) from a US AIR executive (I won't exactly be holding my breath, but feel free to leave me a comment here - my comments are private and moderated and it will not show up unless I approve it and I'll reply directly to you with my contact info) that can explain how this sort of thing can happen to a paying customer of theirs. How do they explain the total disregard of any type of acceptable customer service whatsoever? How can it be that when you opened the schedule and added that flight right next to ours, and then cancelled our flight that we did not get first dibs on the space on the new flight? How in the world do you explain how you could bump the people that had booked first? Why is it not first come, first served? Why were we not moved to the new flight at the same time that we originally booked? Why are we getting penalized for planning ahead and throwing our money at you first? There was not even a tiny hint of trying to make this right. It’s about as wrong as it can be; they know it and they could care less. That’s what they give you for your money at US AIRWAYS.



Of course, if someone at US AIR can make this right by changing our flight to the new flight they opened up after they cancelled ours, I’ll be the first one to hurry right back to this post and shout it out to the world-wide-web, letting everyone know, because, like I said, word of mouth is a powerful tool. It’s just unfortunate to see how US AIR uses their greed power over their customers.



EDITED: If you have any doubt about their customer service record, you can read some of the eye-opening comments on this blog I found...